The question is blunt, and it needs to be asked. Is Ede the only town in Osun? Is the Adeleke family the only competent political lineage in Osun West? If the answer feels like yes in public discourse, then we have a problem that goes deeper than zoning, deeper than 2026 permutations. We have a problem of imagination.
Osun West is not a one-town district and it is not a one-family constituency. It is a senatorial zone of multiple histories, economies, and human capital pools. Iwo, the largest town by population, is a centuries-old center of Islamic scholarship, commerce, and grassroots mobilization. Ejigbo built its reputation on diaspora enterprise and agricultural processing. Ila Orangun produced civil service technocrats who ran ministries long before the Fourth Republic. Ode-Omu, Gbongan, Ikire, Ifeodan, Sekona. Each has political networks, business leaders, academics, and administrators who have governed, built, and delivered without a famous surname. To reduce the zone to Ede is to erase a map of competence that already exists.
The same applies to families. The Adelekes are visible, successful, and politically skilled. Their record in business, entertainment, and public office is a matter of public fact. Visibility, however, is not the same as exclusivity. Osun West has produced ministers, senators, commissioners, judges, professors, and private sector CEOs from outside that family who ran institutions under pressure and left measurable results. Competence is not hereditary. It is not localized to one postal code. When we conflate prominence with capacity, we narrow the leadership pipeline and tell a generation of potential governors, legislators, and policy makers that their names are not on the shortlist because their birthplace is.
This narrowing carries a political cost. First, it breeds resentment. Voters in Iwo, Ayedire, Ola-Oluwa, and Isokan hear the subtext. If the only path to power runs through Ede, then their participation is decorative, not decisive. That resentment becomes apathy or, worse, anti-system politics. Second, it weakens parties. Any political platform that signals to its own base that talent is confined to one town and one family will struggle to recruit its best people. The brightest will migrate to other parties or opt out entirely. Third, it creates single-point failure. If governance is personalized around one geography and one lineage, then institutional memory, networks, and service delivery become vulnerable to individual fortune. Strong democracies build redundancy. They cultivate many centers of excellence so that the state does not pause when one center falters.
The argument here is not against Ede and it is not against the Adelekes. Ede has produced national figures and deserves its place in the state’s political architecture. The Adeleke family has earned political capital through investment, philanthropy, and electoral success. The argument is against monopoly. Political monopolies, like economic ones, raise prices. They raise the price of dissent, the price of entry, and the price of innovation. Osun West pays that price when qualified people from Iwo, Ejigbo, or Ikire step back because the assumption is already set that the ticket is reserved.
If the next cycle is to be about capacity, then the criteria must be public and the competition must be real. Let aspirants from across the ten local governments of Osun West show policy depth, administrative record, and coalition-building skill. Let parties audit their own zoning reflexes and ask whether they are selecting for competence or for familiarity. Let media and civil society expand the lens beyond the most covered town and the most covered name. Voters are not helped by a false choice between one strong family and a vacuum. They are helped by a menu of tested options.
Ede is a vital town. It is not the only town. The Adelekes are a competent family. They are not the only competent family. Osun West is larger than a compound and older than a campaign. The sooner our politics reflects that reality, the sooner the state gets the leadership depth it needs. The alternative is to keep shrinking a big district into a small room, then wonder why the air feels thin.
